As population densities increase in urban areas, broadband service providers are moving fiber optic network endpoints closer to buildings (or areas) that are associated with high population densities, such as into the basements of multi-dwelling units (MDUs). For example, a broadband service provider may place fiber optic network endpoints, e.g. optical network terminals (ONTs), in the basements of large high-rise apartment buildings that include several apartments. The broadband service provider's headend may include an optical line terminal (OLT) that is communicatively coupled to the ONTs, e.g. via fiber optic cables. The ONTs may be individually coupled, via a non-optical network medium, such as a coaxial transmission line, to gateway devices that are located in, and provide broadband service (e.g. television, telephone, and/or Internet) to, user devices in the individual dwelling units. The user devices may include, e.g. set-top boxes, mobile phones, tablet devices, etc. Thus, the ONTs may each include, and/or may be coupled to, a media converter that converts optical signals received over the fiber optic network from the OLT of the headend to electric signals that can be transmitted over the non-optical network medium (such as coax cable) to the gateways in the individual dwelling units, and vice-versa. Alternatively, a media converter may act as a layer-2 bridge, which receives the data packets from the OLT of the headend and bridges the received data packets over the non-optical network medium (such as coax cable) to the gateways, and vice-versa.
The OLT/ONTs/media converters, gateway devices, and user devices may be arranged in a hierarchical tree network arrangement that may be beneficial for broadcast transmissions from the headend to the user devices, e.g. a single transmission that is being transmitted from the headend to multiple user devices. However, the hierarchical tree network arrangement may result in network congestion when multiple simultaneous unicast transmissions are being transmitted from the headend to the user devices, e.g. when the user devices are simultaneously accessing adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming content from the headend